Romans 12:14

Bless them which persecute you. — Apparently with allusion to Matthew 5:44. It was probably just about the time that St. Paul was writing this Epistle, or at most a year or two later, that the series of compositions which ultimately took the shape of our present Gospels began. It is not, however, necessary to suppose that St. Paul had actually seen one of these. The record of our Lord’s teaching was no doubt at first preserved and circulated in the Church orally, and it would be in this form that St. Paul first became acquainted with the precept to which he here seems to allude. There is, perhaps, another reference to the Sermon on the Mount in 1 Corinthians 7:10. Such references occur (as we should expect) more frequently in the Epistle of St. James.